1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a Bluetooth® (hereinafter, “Bluetooth”) device, and in particular, to an apparatus and a method for transmitting data to a plurality of other terminals through an Object Push Profile (OPP) service in a Bluetooth-enabled portable terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, the use of portable terminals has been dramatically increasing due to their portability. As the use of the portable terminals increases, service providers and terminal manufacturers develop more convenient additional functions in order to attract more users.
Bluetooth is one of the additional functions that are being developed. Bluetooth is a short distance wireless communication protocol. Using Bluetooth, the portable terminals provide various functions such as a wireless headset function, a music transfer function, a mobile printing function, and a file transfer function.
Bluetooth is defined by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), a nonprofit organization established to provide low-priced short distance wireless connection for data communication and voice communication using 2.4 GHz. Bluetooth is based on the IEEE 802.11 standard. Bluetooth allows an overlapping of multiple independent piconets in the same space, such that Bluetooth can be used even in a space where there are many information processing devices and communication devices. In addition, Bluetooth provides a transmission error correction function, an identification function, an encryption function, and an energy saving function.
FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating a connection process between a portable terminal with a general Bluetooth module, and neighboring Bluetooth devices.
Referring to FIG. 1, in order to use neighboring Bluetooth devices 122, 124, and 126 corresponding to services provided by a portable terminal 100 with a Bluetooth module, the portable terminal 100 searches for neighboring Bluetooth devices connectable to the portable terminal 100. Thereafter, a list 102 of the searched Bluetooth devices 122, 124 and 126 is generated and one Bluetooth device for connection to the portable terminal 100 is selected from the list 102.
In other words, one Bluetooth device to be used is selected from the list 102, and then a service corresponding to the selected Bluetooth device is performed between the selected Bluetooth device and the portable terminal 100.
The Bluetooth devices support an Object Push Profile (OPP) service, a Serial Port Profile (SPP) service, and a File Transfer Profile (FTP) service.
The OPP service allows a VersitCard (vCard) and a VersitMemo (vMemo) to be exchanged between personal computers and personal digital assistants and mobile communication terminals. The SPP service emulates a serial cable connection. The FTP service allows files to be exchanged.
Within the OPP service, both a server role and a client role are defined. An OPP server and an OPP client may selectively perform a push operation or a pull operation. The operations of the OPP server and the OPP client are performed through a peer-to-peer connection.
In case when data transmission is performed through the OPP service providing the peer-to-peer connection, a Bluetooth device that acts as an OPP server repeats data transmission as many times as the number of other Buletooth devices that request the data transmission.
Therefore, an apparatus and method for multicasting data to a plurality of Bluetooth devices when the portable terminal transmits the data through the OPP service is required.